In the past I have voted for the less-bad party, but now I am coming to the view that I should vote for the party that best represents my views, regardless of the fact that they have no chance of being elected. I am hoping that at least if other people do likewise it will show that there is a slice of the population who share my values, and whose concerns should be addressed by whichever shower of shite is in government.

If anybody votes for the party whos proposed chancellor of the exchequor was the financial adviser to Gordon Brown just prior to the financial crisis, the person who sold off the UKs Gold reserves at rock bottom prices, the person who decided it was a good idea to raid pension pots, they need their heads checking.

And yes that person is Ed Balls.

How anybody can vote for this disaster, to me, shows a significant lack of understanding of politics. The man is a danger to the nation.

The classic line is moaning about politicians and how crap they are. Those same politicians then get in

the thing is you see, I genuinely have no interest in it at all. not a smidgen. I don’t care who wins.

For the first time in my lifetime, the constituency I live in is in play, so I’m looking forward to it.

And the way the media is going batshit over the prospect of the SNP having some power is hilarious.

I would let Simon Cowell run the election, that way you would get people voting especially young people and the outcome wouldn’t always be what suits 50+ white males with 300k equity in a house and healthy pension.

Ton, do you not even care for the sake of your kids/grandkids?

one mans meat ….
“I find it really depressing that people can’t bee arsed to engage with politics or vote.

The classic line is moaning about politicians and how crap they are. Those same politicians then get in “

I don’t vote
– lived in safe seats

– issues with votes/seat allocation fairness
“Polling vote share estimates have considerable credibility but translating them into seat numbers is fraught with difficulty. In 2005 Labour got 35.2% of the votes and 55.1% of the seats. Five years later, with 36.1% of the votes the Conservatives got fewer seats (47.2%). And, of course, in 2010 the Liberal Democrats’ 23.6% of the votes delivered only 8.8% of the seats.”, “In 2010 if Labour and the Conservatives had received the same share of the vote, Labour would have won 30 more seats because of this alone. It should glean a similar advantage in 2015.” from http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/generalelection/translating-votes-into-seats/

– issue with the system being biased towards popularity as opposed to reality (ie you have to get in power to do things, reality, imho, will not be the best marketing plan)

– issue with politicians, I got doorstepped once, I (politely)stopped him midflow, and expressed my opinion (politely) and asked him to leave(also politely), he then informed me that I was a ***t for having that opinion and not listening to him, nice. On a wider basis do you deal with clients who make a promise and don’t bother keeping it.

Work now intervenes

If anybody votes for the party whos chancellor of the exchequor was the financial adviser to Gordon Brown just prior to the financial crisis, the person who sold off the UKs Gold reserves at rock bottom prices

As usual,the truth is more complicated than a soundbite

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5788dbac-7680-11e0-b05b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3VTp4xXG8

However, people died to earn us the vote,

Genuine question:

I always thought that the extension of the franchise to universal adult suffrage was a long slow process of parliamentary reform.

So, apart form the odd lady who may or (may not) have thrown herself under the Kings’s horse, who actually died to earn us a vote?

Ton, do you not even care for the sake of your kids/grandkids?

I will tell you what I think, since I was born, when we had a labour government, wages have got better, there is plenty of work, the nhs works fine, people are deffo better off, people are healthier in general, people have far more leisure time, home ownership is at it’s highest.
all this has happened through changing governments, I cant see any of this changing regardless of who signs things off. hence I thing our generations to come should probably get by fine.

hence I thing our generations to come should probably get by fine.

Except the younger generation can probably wave goodbye to free healthcare, the prospect of being able to buy a house and eventually retiring with a pension.

I will tell you what I think, since I was born, when we had a labour government, wages have got better, there is plenty of work, the nhs works fine, people are deffo better off, people are healthier in general, people have far more leisure time, home ownership is at it’s highest.
all this has happened through changing governments, I cant see any of this changing regardless of who signs things off. hence I thing our generations to come should probably get by fine.

I know exactly how you feel Ton, I think the UK is doing OK actually, there are a few things I would change but nothing major. And my suspicion is that whoever gets in, nothing much will change anyway.

There’s an interesting article on the BBC about a lack of inspiration in the election here. A choice quote from it is:
“What we are being offered is a choice between a party that is accused of being heartless and a party that is accused of being incompetent”

you have to vote, because the racists, the wierdos and the malcontents most certainly will.

As usual,the truth is more complicated than a soundbite

Indeed it is.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Gordon Brown is responsible for the destruction of private sector pensions due to the changes he made on Pension Fund dividends AND Labour’s abject failure to reform public sector pensions; the guarantees of which will become completely unaffordable within the next 10 years.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/10343130/Who-will-end-this-pension-scandal.html

http://www.rosaltmann.com/ssp_end_of_final_salary_jan09.htm

^ As per my previous post blame Ed Balls!!!!!

wages have got better, there is plenty of work, the nhs works fine, people are deffo better off, people are healthier in general, people have far more leisure time, home ownership is at it’s highest.
all this has happened through changing governments,

well that’s great but it’s also come at a cost. A huge national debt. And people that will have to pay it back, the same people that can’t afford to buy a house of their own – your kids and grandkids. The parties views on spending do differ. Not sure I agree with the extent of tory cuts but at least they are facing up to the problem and means I would never trust current labour with the national purse.

I’m wondering if you actually read the article you linked to?

It began in the late Eighties, under Margaret Thatcher, when the Treasury decided that if a company pension fund had accumulated a surplus of more than 5 per cent over its future liabilities, the business concerned would be taxed on the excess. This prompted bosses either to reduce pension contributions or freeze them.

Mr Osborne has refused to reverse Brown’s tax grab, worth about £8 billion a year to the Treasury. His justification, completely unconvincing, is that other measures, such as the reduction in corporation tax and help for lower-paid workers, mitigate the annual 10-figure pension hit.
The Chancellor, it seems, is hoping that nobody will notice the contrast between the warmth of his words for “strivers” and the cold-blooded willingness with which he continues to bend the tax system, as it relates to private pensions, against them.
In his Budget speech this year, Mr Osborne said: “For years people have felt that the whole system was tilted against those who did the right thing: who worked, who saved, who aspired. These are the very people we must support if Britain is to have a prosperous future.”
Bravo, except the manifestation of that help, as far as pensioners with private savings are concerned, has been a further tightening of the screw on tax incentives for many who are trying to accumulate a decent pot.
Since taking over from Alistair Darling, Mr Osborne has cut the annual amount that can be put tax free into a pension from £255,000 to £50,000 and it will fall again to £40,000 next April. He has also reduced the lifetime allowance, ie, the total amount that can be compiled tax free from £1.5 million to £1.25 million. According to HMRC, that will hurt about 360,000 pension savers.

Genuine question:

I always thought that the extension of the franchise to universal adult suffrage was a long slow process of parliamentary reform.

So, apart form the odd lady who may or (may not) have thrown herself under the Kings’s horse, who actually died to earn us a vote?

I was thinking a lot further back than that, although the Suffragette movement was also in my thoughts…
shall we start with The Peasants’ Revolt? Or perhaps go back a bit further to Magna Carta – granted that was the barons rather than “the people”, but that paved the way for the parliamentary system we have today

Bigrich has a point – iirc Hitler had the biggest share of the vote in German history, by latching on to popular discontent and then ratcheting it up from there.

As Nick Clegg said on the last leg, not voting is like going into Nandos, letting someone else order and then complaining that you haven’t been given what you wanted.

Either way you’re given a thin layer of artificial spice covering chicken that came from the same factory farm.

How anybody can vote for this disaster, to me, shows a significant lack of understanding of politics. The man is a danger to the nation.

Well at least you have an opinion, even if it is slightly hysterical.

Personally I’d have no problem with Ed Balls as chancellor.

I’m with Ton on this. I’ve voted at every opportunity for 30 years and I’m starting to feel like I’m being taken for a ride by a system that’s designed to perpetuate a culture of bickering, tinkering and mediocrity. It feels like the purpose of politics is to win elections rather than to effectively manage the country. Politicians will say what they think we want to hear in order to get reelected but what they say and what they’ll do can be worlds apart.

In my lifetime we’ve sold off infrastructure, decimated social housing, turned a house from a home to a material assets, torn great swathes of industry to shreds, reduced social mobility, continued to mix faith with politics and education, begun a stealthy privatisation of the health service and reduced our world standing by being a whiny little bitch over Europe and inappropriately sending men and women off to die in conflicts of dubious merit and legality. Both major parties are responsible for this and however i vote one of those two parties will form the major part of the next government.

Then each time an election comes around the political parties lay out their stall of uninspiring idea of how they are going to do a fractionally less worse job than the others and i’m expected to have faith that what they are telling me is the truth despite 30 years of experiences that say otherwise.

That’s without taking into account a first past the post system which means that my vote will not actually have any effect on the outcome.

Perhaps disengagement from the system is as effective a form of protest as spoiling a ballot, it’s not as if nobody records the turnout at elections.

Perhaps disengagement from the system is as effective a form of protest as spoiling a ballot, it’s not as if nobody records the turnout at elections.

hasn’t worked out well for the young though has it, pensioners have been getting better and better terms as they turn out and vote.

If my constituency was a marginal (sadly it is not) I’d vote Labour to get the Tories out. But MPs are meant to represent all constituents, whoever they voted for. Therefore I think it’s important to let them know what you think as expressed by voting for minority parties like the Greens, which I shall consider doing. If we only voted for the major parties they might run away with the idea that we actually supported them. Ft.

Genuine question:

I always thought that the extension of the franchise to universal adult suffrage was a long slow process of parliamentary reform.

So, apart form the odd lady who may or (may not) have thrown herself under the Kings’s horse, who actually died to earn us a vote?

john_drummer’s mentioned Magna Carta, the Peasant’s Revolt (which didn’t do much), I’d also add the Civil War, not to mention things like the rioting that took place due to the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, etc. The Black Death is another important factor, though obviously not human-instigated.

pensioners have been getting better and better terms as they turn out and vote.

isn’t that just a case of playing to the gallery. People that are retired or close enough to retirement to be influenced by it form a large chunk of society and people of that age group have always been more likely to vote, therefore if you’re trying to win an election it would make sense to target a large block of the population that are likely to count towards the result.

What are these better terms? State pension is basically breadline support, retirement age has gone up, tax relief on private pension funds has gone down. The rules governing private pensions are so lax that a fair number of people are going to be far worse off than they expected. Care of the elderly is clearly not a healthcare priority. Where they exist at all community groups for the elderly are either run on charitable donations or by the sheer bloody mindedness of dedicated individuals, government lets the elderly down as much if not more than the rest of us.

Maybe I’m just having a glass half empty kind of day. 😐

Which hasn’t been helped by the full colour newsletter that’s just come through the door with Boris’s fat face and kooky hair plastered all over it. “Look here’s Boris on a train, he cares about transport infrastructure”, “Here’s Boris with a takeaway sandwich. He’s a man of the people”, Here’s Boris doing whatever Boris thinks he needs to do to further his own self interests.

If the electioneers thought most 18-30’s would turn up to vote you would soon find the parties making different promises.

Which hasn’t been helped by the full colour newsletter that’s just come through the door with Boris’s fat face and kooky hair plastered all over it. “Look here’s Boris on a train, he cares about transport infrastructure”, “Here’s Boris with a takeaway sandwich. He’s a man of the people”, Here’s Boris doing whatever Boris thinks he needs to do to further his own self interests.

Do we know of a Prime Minister who came to be in office purely on the basis of being the interest of the people rather than of self ambition?

Do we know of a Prime Minister who came to be in office purely on the basis of being the interest of the people rather than of self ambition?

True I guess. I’d hope there was one somewhere in British history just so that I could maintain the tiniest shred of optimism.

The best I can come up with is José Mujica, Uruguay’s president that still lives on his farm and drives a battered old Beetle, but he’s a long way removed from politics as we practise it in the UK. He couldn’t get elected in Britain because all we would focus on would be the idea that he looks a bit scruffy.

MoreCashThanDash – Member

Should be compulsory to vote, ideally with a “none of the above” option.

Isn’t that a fail on two counts – people should be free to do what they want. If “not vote” is a free decision it has the same validity as a decision to vote. Telling people how to vote is a complete no, no in a democracy.

The striking thing in the developed world is the rise of the protest vote. Most incumbents are in trouble whatever their political persuasion. Why? They do not have the answers to the challenge we face. Of course, the protest parties feed on this but they offer no solutions – as one paper described them recently, they are terrorists without guns. In some cases they lack credibility despite honourable intentions (greens) in others they are little more than deceitful (think education and NHS north of the wall).

For the last 30 years, we have had growth based on leverage/borrowing. This is merely bringing forward consumption and delaying payment and it made many feel really good. But it is a mirage and we are now at the stage when that pattern needs to be reversed – pay now, consume later – and guess what? Its not very popular. But any political party who ignores this basic truism is simply lying.

More importantly, none of them address the other killer issue facing the UK – the on-going decline in productivity. This needs proper supply side reforms that take time to have effect, but no one (other than French socialists) appear happy to talk about this. Instead we have artificial and deliberate market failures used a band aids.

The protest parties have no panaceas. They are more like placebos, but they are highly unlikely to be able to sort out these issues. The hangover from the debt bubble has more legs to it yet.

Oh, and we have Grexit coming again soon….

Do we know of a Prime Minister who came to be in office purely on the basis of being the interest of the people rather than of self ambition?

Don’t be so cynical! We’ve had some shining examples of selfless sacrifice for the good of the nation…..

now gordon ruined pensions?

their death knell was sounded when this man

came up with the genius idea of the pension holiday, it sent the signal that pensions were no longer sacred and could be raided by private sector and government

chancellors hate pensions, they take money out of current circulation and save them for future chancellors to play with, every chancellor since, except john major? has continued this sustained degrading of pensions, look at Osbornes latest relaxtion of the rules, hes banking on a short term economic boost to his books that will see the state picking up the bill when those who blew all their cash need state support in the not so distant future
by which time Gideon, like Nigel, will be long since retired to his Baronecy, sittinng on many a fat non-exec directors paycheck

now we are stuck in a race to the bottom; the politics of envy has private pension holders now clamouring for the destruction of public sector pensions

now we are stuck in a race to the bottom; the politics of envy has private pension holders now clamouring for the destruction of public sector pensions

You should form a protest party kimbers!!! Abolishing Ponzi schemes could be a different take on this issue.

The protest parties have no panaceas. They are more like placebos, but they are highly unlikely to be able to sort out these issues. The hangover from the debt bubble has more legs to it yet.

This is where I am in my research; some other parties are promising a fair bit, but there’s little substance and even less experience behind them. So the defacto answer is to stick with the current lot who have at least done something positive, have some experience in the matter and upon whom we can rely on to take the best ideas from other parties and probably introduce them during the next term.

The Cleggy experience tells you all you need to know.

Being in power is very different to moaning about it. You actually have to do things. And thats hard and the effects are visible not just hypothetical.

It certainly interesting to see the English media whip themselves into a lather over the uppity Scots not voting for one of the two main parties.

Democracy eh, apparently its overrated.

*declaration I am in a final salary public sector pension
Ive also seen my pension collapse ata previous institute thanks to unsustainable final salaryness and pension holidays
Id rather it was made more managable now, than clinging on to final salary (though it should still be quite generous!)

richmtb – Member
It certainly interesting to see the English media whip themselves into a lather over the uppity Scots not voting for one of the two main parties.

I think it is more the breathtaking hypocrisy of the SNP

Democracy eh, apparently its overrated.

They certainly seem to think so.

Those North of the border, by threatening not to comply with the 2 party status quo are, according to Dave ‘undermining a government that is the democratic choice of the British People’

Well, not really Dave. In fact its the polar opposite of that. For a start they’re as much the ‘British People’ as you are, just with less annoying accents. And secondly, if you fail to achieve an overall majority, thats because the ‘British People’ have decided, thoroughly democratically, that you don’t deserve one.

And somehow the Scottish had this ridiculous idea that Westminster is arrogant. God knows where that impression came from. I’d imagine that every time Dave or Ed open their clueless mouths on this subject, the SNP vote jumps up a couple of percentage points. They can’t help themselves though, can they?

No wonder Alex is looking even smugger than ever (quite some achievement!)

it’s also come at a cost. A huge national debt. And people that will have to pay it back, the same people that can’t afford to buy a house of their own – your kids and grandkids.

What was the size of the national debt just prior to the creation of the NHS, etc? What was it afterward?